LITMIR.BIZ

       2

      5 NOVEMBER 1605—Combe Abbey, Warwickshire

      It was my fault, but the sun had to share the blame. Because of the sun, I had escaped alone. It had been a wet November in England. To judge by the purple-edged clouds hanging just above the horizon, the rain would return before nightfall. But just then, bright sunlight spilled down through holes torn in a bruised cloudy sky.

      Like contented hens, my three ladies had spread out their feathers on the river bank and settled in the patches of sun. Tipsy with unexpected sunlight and greedy for more, they agreed that I could come to no harm here on my guardian’s quiet estate.

      ‘I won’t go far,’ I promised. ‘Just a little way along the forest track across the ford.’

      I was learning. When I was younger, perhaps six years old, I could never grasp why I should always seem to do as I was told. Then I learned. When people trust you, they watch you less.

      My greyhound Trey splashed across the river Smite beside me as I balanced from stone to stone. Then he raced off after a squirrel and now barked furiously in the distance. My favourite toy spaniel, Belle, with her little short legs, had stayed behind on the riverbank.

      Under cover of the forest canopy, I stopped to look back. No one had followed me.

      Around me, the sun poked wavering holes through the wind-stirred trees and scattered spots of light across the ground like golden coins. I set off along a twisting leafy tunnel, through occasional pools of sunlight, to discover what adventure lay around the mysterious bend ahead of me. Under my leather riding boots the crumbly leaf mould of the forest track was sharp-smelling and black from rain in the night.

      I stopped in a clearing, took off my hat and held up my face and hands to the rare, wonderful heat. A day like this tempted me against my better judgement to fall in love with England after all.

      Something struck my hair lightly and slid down my chest—a yellow oak leaf, so bright and smooth that it seemedprecious and mysteriously purposeful. I picked it off my bodice and held it up to the sun. It was so perfect that it made me want to cry. I tucked it, smooth and cool, into my bodice to press later in a book.

      The voices and laughter of my attendants arrived only faintly on the wind from the far side of the river. I picked up a piece of fallen branch and threw it as far as I could. I listened to the satisfying crash. I wanted to shout with joy.

      Unwatched, unattended. A miracle of freedom.

      I spread my legs wide. Happily, I emptied my bladder like a mare under the cone of my skirts, felt the steamy warmth and smelled the friendly barnyard odour from my own body.

      Ever since my family came south, I had lived in a cage of eyes. Scotland had been far more free. In Edinburgh, while we waited to travel down to London, I rode almost every day with my older brother Henry, one of his hawks on his wrist. Accompanied only by a single groom and my greyhounds, Trey, Deuce, Quattro and Quince, we escaped together up onto the crags above the city under a sky of bright luminous grey. There, we stood side-by-side looking down on Edinburgh from the Cat Nick, a rocky point higher than the castle where our father had been born, higher even than the gulls. In the waters of the Firth beyond us, an island crouched low and dark in the water like a dragon waiting to spring on Fife. We would watch the mists blow in from the sea to cover it before we rode back. On the last day before we left Scotland, I took a small piece of sharp granite from the crags and hid it in my writing chest. I hold it in my hand now when I can’t fall asleep.

      I paused again in a little glade pitted with rabbit holes. The only sound was a leafy whispering. Trey had stopped barking. I stood so still that five rabbits popped out from under the roots of an old oak and began to forage on the forest floor.

      I imagined that I became a rabbit. My nose twitched. I hopped forward to nibble a fresh tuft of grass, then pulled my hindquarters up after me, as if I had almost forgotten and left them behind.

      One of the rabbits lifted its head. In an explosion of movement, they all disappeared into the ground.

      I turned.

      A handsome young man stood on the track watching me. Coins of sunlight danced on his shoulders and fair hair, which was almost the colour of the oak leaf.

      I felt a thump of startled interest and grew a little breathless. He had materialised silently in the forest glade as if by magic. I knew that I had just stepped out of my everyday life into something far more interesting.

      As we stood regarding each other in silence, I grew more and more certain that he was one of the magical creatures from my nurse’s bedtime stories, who lived in forests and lochs and under stones. Always in our world but invisible unless they choose to show themselves.

      I tried to think how to speak to him. He might have been anything, a tree-soul or a magic stag like those that roamed the Highlands, which had taken the shape of a man.

      I wanted to reach out and pick the coins from his broad shoulders and put them into my purse, knowing that they would turn into real gold.

      I was not afraid. His handsome face, though pale, was gentle and seemed made for cheerfulness. In any case, I was protected by the fairy shot, an ancient flint arrowhead, which my nurse, Mrs Hay, had sewn into my petticoat.

      I smiled in greeting. When he did not smile back, I nodded encouragement.

      He did not respond. We stood in silence.

      ‘Are you a spirit of the forest?’ I asked at last.

      He opened his mouth as if he wished to speak but still remained silent.

      I thought I understood then. I looked at his hands,

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